


The Lonely God

by indigostohelit



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-24
Updated: 2011-09-24
Packaged: 2017-10-24 00:33:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/256865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indigostohelit/pseuds/indigostohelit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The lonely god lives in a hut by the river, and he's very old, and he's very, very tired.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Lonely God

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Polski available: [Samotny Bóg](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3352430) by [whynothulk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whynothulk/pseuds/whynothulk)



The lonely god lives in a hut by the river where the little girls like to play dolls. He has shaggy brown hair and big brown eyes and a raggedy brown suit, and he's always smiling, and he won't stop smiling.

He likes the villagers to visit him, the lonely god. He likes all of them, but the little girls especially, the ones who are old enough to ask pert questions but too young to know enough to stay away. He smiles at them and calls them names that don't belong to them, he tells Sarai to come along, he tells Jenn she was fantastic fantastic fantastic, he tells Ada she's brilliant. He tells all of them he's sorry, he's so, so, so sorry, he can't seem to stop telling them he's sorry.

He rarely blinks.

The lonely god laughs when storms are coming, and he's scared of shadows, and he hates silence. After some time, the little girls learn to stop visiting him.

He came long ago, the lonely god. No one quite remembers how, or when. The oldest people in the village say he simply walked out of the woods one day with nothing but the clothes on his back, and when they asked him where he was from, he said he'd killed his home and left his wife, and please could he have a place to stay. He smiled less then, and his eyes were clearer. They'd asked him his name, and he'd begun to answer and then stopped and said he wasn't worth his name any more.

They think he's run away.

The lonely god lives in a hut by the river where the little girls like to play dolls, and one day he walks out of his house and sees the children playing, and he sits down and dies there, as simply as that. The little girls don't notice for a while. He's bathed in the sunlight as he sits, a golden glow that eventually fades.

He's carried solemnly into the woods and left under a tree for the earth to take, the lonely god. Sitting propped against the trunk, with his raggedy hair and his raggedy coat, he looks more peaceful than he ever has before, more tired, more ancient. There's a girl who claims afterwards she hears a peculiar noise from the woods, like a knife on a fiddle, and feels a wind that comes from nowhere, but she's a teller of stories, someone lost in too much romance and intellect, and it's time to live in the real world.

But they can't seem to.

The lonely god leaves traces in the world, traces in minds, traces in dreams that shouldn't be there. The little girls are melancholy as they play with their dolls, and they don't know why. The stream taps a rhythm of four against the stones, and villagers find themselves walking in time to the melody.

He was mad, the lonely god. Not fantastically, brilliantly, interestingly mad, the way some men are. He was mad in the way of men who call little girls RoseMarthaDonnaAmy, and can't stop saying sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry sorry like a broken record, and begin to cry when the fog rolls over the beach or the wolves howl at night. He was mad in the way of men who hate their own reflections, mad in the way of men who have broken, mad in the way of men who have loved and been loved in return and cannot hold together any longer.

The river sings its song against the earth. They keep his memory clasped to their chests, like something precious.


End file.
